Special Messages for Your Little Ones

The Best Baby Shower Planning Ideas Part 2: Best Places Theme

If there is one thing I have a ton of experience in, it is planning showers, baby showers, bridal showers, you name it, I’ve planned it. There are is a basic checklist of 6 things you need for planning a stellar baby shower:

A theme or a color scheme

Food

Activities

Dessert

Presents

Pictures

In part 1, I gave you some great resources for planning and selecting the best ideas for the 6 items on the checklist. Today, I’m going to plan The Best Place For Me baby shower! You can do this when any of your favorite books or something that is special to your mommy to be.

Inspiration!

Ok Step 1: Theme / Color Scheme. I used the book and the cover as my inspiration for colors and decorations. The focus is the hot air balloon on the front cover and the combination of blues, pinks, and greens. I really like vintage so I think softening things up a bit with a few pops of color would be ideal for this themed baby shower. If you have tables set up for the event, each table can have a hot air balloon that “lands” at a different location from the book. Michaels craft store has some pre-made Martha Stewart (still affordable) decorations that go fantastically with this theme. You can see images below of easy to assemble pin wheels and banners. If you have the time, you can easily make these yourself using scrapbook paper. I think the pinwheels add a great touch of whimsy to the theme, and who doesn’t love a pinwheel!

The details really come through when you’re planning a shower. Another fun little decoration you can do is hang bookmarks with images from the book from trees or from fixtures in the location. They will look like little ornaments and if you add some twinkle lights you will be all set!

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Step 2: Food. This step is all based on personal preferences and budget. There is no secret here. You can use a wide variety of options here from picking a favorite restaurant, to catering, pot luck, or making a nice spread of your own. I like to have a little variety so that guests can pick and choose. Brunch is always one of my favorite meals and you can have both breakfast and lunch options for your guests. My favorite list of foods for a brunch shower are:

French Toast casserole

Egg casserole

A salad

A selection of lunch meat and rolls with tomatoes, cheese, or whatever fixins are your favorite.

I sometimes tend to buy WAY too much because I’m always afraid of never having enough. So try to gauge how many guests you will have and plan accordingly. Too little is bad, if you have too much at least you can have leftovers of your favorite meals!

Step 3: Activities. In Part 1 of this post, I shared a list of my favorite activities and how to go about making making them fun and new from the standard baby shower activities that you are used to. For this shower, I would most definitely do the onesie decorating bar, but I would set up a selection of iron ons and templates for all the places in the book:

Paris: Eiffel Towers, cute little love birds with berets, mustaches if you know mommy is having a boy, anything that comes to mind when you think of Paris or France.

You can add any places that are important to mommy and some fun and cute iron ons to match! This is the website I used to learn how to execute this activity without it being cheeseball: DIY Onesie Party . I made my own kit to include the following:

A variety of patterned quilt fabric (sold at Jo-ann’s in squares)

The iron on fabric backing stuff. Yes, this is what I called it when I went to the fabric store. Don’t judge. I don’t sew so this was the best I could do to describe it. They sell it by the yard so get a lot of it.

Pre-made iron ons (including letters)

Cut outs of cute animals and such that I turned into templates for guests to cut during the party

Scissors

A few irons

A few ironing boards

Onesies (Walmart has cute ones for not very expensive)

White cloth diapers (aka burp cloths). You can have guests make matching sets to go with their onesies.

And that’s it! You need to do a little prep work to put the backing on the fabric, but that’s really easy. Now turn it into a contest and have the mommy vote on her favorite to win a prize. This activity takes a decent amount of time, so if you do this, you don’t need a ton of other activities.

For more innovative baby shower ideas, take a quick read of Part 1 of this post, you can’t go wrong choosing any of combination of them.

Step 4: Dessert. I mention a build your own cupcake bar in the first installment of this post, but I found these adorable dessert tables on Hostess with the Mostess that I think would be absolutely perfect for this theme! You can change the color scheme and feature more blue if baby is a boy or greens if you want a more neutral theme.

From: Hostess with the Mostess and Louise Sanders

Definitely check out the full details from HWTM because they list where you can purchase all of the decorations as well.

Steps 5 and 6: Presents and Pictures. This one is pretty self explanatory. Since mommy will be busy opening presents, it’s up to the hostess, the guests, or a photographer to take pictures of her opening up all of her presents. These will be cherished by her forever. I recommend asking guests to email you their photos from the event or provide disposable cameras for guests to use for candids. Your guests can be the “tourists” visiting all the places you highlight in your The Best Place For Me theme. Since you will be using a book for your theme, you can ask guests in the invitations to bring along a book to give as a special gift to start baby’s first library.

Pick up your copy of The Best Place For Mehere and get started planning this fun and unique shower!